3870Khttp://www.pcper.com
PC Perspectivehttp://www.pcper.com/images/podcast-logo-600x600.pngenAMD A10-5800K Performance Preview: Trinity for Desktophttp://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-A10-5800K-Performance-Preview-Trinity-Desktop
<p><em><strong>Editor&#39;s Note:</strong> Right before the release of this story some discussion has been ongoing at other hardware sites about the methods AMD employed with this NDA and release of information. &nbsp;Essentially, AMD allowed us to write about only the gaming benchmarks and specifications for the Trinity APU, rather than allowing the full gamut of results including CPU tests, power consumption, etc. &nbsp;Why? &nbsp;Obviously AMD wants to see a good message be released about their product; by release info in stages they can at least allow a brief window for that. &nbsp;</em></p>
<p><em>Does it suck that they did this? &nbsp;Yes. &nbsp;Do I feel like we should have NOT published this because of those circumstances? &nbsp;Not at all. &nbsp;Information is information and we felt that getting it to you as soon as possible was beneficial. &nbsp;Also, because the parts are not on sale today we are not risking adversely affecting your purchasing decision with these limited benchmarks. &nbsp;When the parts DO go on sale, you will have our full review with all the positives and negatives laid out before you, in the open. &nbsp;</em></p>
<p><em>This kind of stuff happens often in our world - NVIDIA sent out GTX 660 cards but not GTX 650s because of lack luster performance for example - and we balance it and judge it on a case by case basis. &nbsp;I don&#39;t think anyone looking at this story sees a &quot;full review&quot; and would think to make a final decision about ANY product from it. &nbsp;That&#39;s not the goal. &nbsp;But just as we sometimes show you rumored specs and performance numbers on upcoming parts before the NDAs expire, we did this today with &nbsp;Trinity - it just so happens it was with AMD&#39;s blessing. &nbsp;</em></p>
<p>AMD has graciously allowed us the chance to give readers a small glimpse at the performance of the upcoming A series APUs based on the Trinity processor.&nbsp; Today we are covering the SKUs that will be released, general gaming performance, and what kind of power consumption we are seeing as compared to the previous Llano processor and any Intel processor we can lay hands upon.</p>
<p>Trinity is based on the updated Piledriver architecture, which is an update to Bulldozer.&nbsp; Piledriver improves upon IPC by a small amount over Bulldozer, but the biggest impact is that of power consumption and higher clockspeeds.&nbsp; It was pretty well known that Bulldozer did not hit the performance expectations of both AMD and consumers.&nbsp; Part of this was due to the design pulling more power at the target clockspeeds than was expected.&nbsp; To remedy this, AMD lowered clockspeeds.&nbsp; Piledriver fixes most of those power issues, as well as sprinkles some extra efficiency into the design, so that clockspeeds can scale to speeds that will make these products more competitive with current Intel offerings.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>The Lineup</strong></p>
<p>The top end model that AMD will be offering of the socket FM2 processors (for the time being) is the A10 5800K.&nbsp; This little number is a dual module/quad core processor running at 3.8 GHz with a turbo speed of 4.2 GHz.&nbsp; We see below the exact model range of products that AMD will be offering.&nbsp; This does not include the rumored Athlon II editions that will have a disabled GPU onboard.&nbsp; Each module features 2 MB of L2 cache, for a total of 4 MB on the processor.&nbsp; The A10 series does not feature a dedicated L3 cache as the FX processors do.&nbsp; This particular part is unlocked as well, so expect some decent overclocking right off the bat.</p>
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<p class="rtecenter" style=""><div class = "center-article-image"><a href="/reviews/Processors/AMD-A10-5800K-Performance-Preview-Trinity-Desktop" class="inline-image-link" title="View: trin_line.jpg"><img src="/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2012-09-26/trin_line.jpg" alt="trin_line.jpg" title="trin_line.jpg" class="pcper-inline" width="602" height="339" /></a></div></p>
<p>The A10 5800K features the VLIW 4 based graphics portion, which is significantly more efficient than the previous VLIW 5 based unit in Llano (A8 3870K and brethren).&nbsp; Even though it features the same number of stream processors as the 3870K, AMD is confident that this particular unit is upwards of 20% faster than the previous model.&nbsp; This GPU portion is running at a brisk 800 MHz.&nbsp; The GPU core is also unlocked, so expect some significant leaps in that piece of the puzzle as well.</p>
<p class="rtecenter" style=""><div class = "center-article-image"><a href="/reviews/Processors/AMD-A10-5800K-Performance-Preview-Trinity-Desktop" class="inline-image-link" title="View: trin_perf.jpg"><img src="/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2012-09-26/trin_perf.jpg" alt="trin_perf.jpg" title="trin_perf.jpg" class="pcper-inline" width="602" height="339" /></a></div></p>
<p>That is about all I can give out at this time, since this is primarily based on what we see in the diagram and what we have learned from the previous Trinity release (for notebooks).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-A10-5800K-Performance-Preview-Trinity-Desktop">Click to read the entire post here.</a></p>
<p></p><p><a href="http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-A10-5800K-Performance-Preview-Trinity-Desktop" target="_blank">read more</a></p>http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-A10-5800K-Performance-Preview-Trinity-Desktop#commentsProcessors3870KA-10a10A10 5800KamdllanopiledrivertrinityThu, 27 Sep 2012 03:31:54 +0000Josh Walrath55437 at http://www.pcper.com